Carbon cleanup would save millions of lives, study finds

Sep 22, 2013

This picture taken on August 14, 2013 shows smoke rising from a chimney at a coal chemical factory in Huaibei, east China's Anhui province.

Reducing fossil-fuel emissions to safer levels would save millions of lives annually by the end of the century, a study said on Sunday.

The estimate is based on a simulation of levels of two big pollutants, fine particulate matter and ozone, from coal, oil and gas.

Researchers led by Jason West at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill derive their model from an emissions projection called RCP4.5.

RCP4.5 is a middle-of-the-road scenario under which average surface temperatures would be about 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees) higher at 2100 compared to pre-industrial levels.

Under RCP4.5, there would be around half a million avoided deaths annually in 2030, rising to 1.3 million in 2050 and 2.2 million in 2100, according to the paper.

Avoiding premature deaths would keep people healthier and leave them in the workforce.

That would translate into an economic benefit that, in 2030 and 2050, would exceed the costs of reducing emissions, especially in East Asia, where two-thirds of these fatalities would occur.

The cost advantage, though, would narrow at the end of the century as it would become more expensive to wring out substantial further emissions cuts.

The paper is published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change.

It coincidentally appears ahead of a new assessment on global warming and its impacts that the UN climate panel is due to release in Stockholm on Friday.

Ozone is a triple-atom molecule of oxygen that is protective in the stratosphere, as it helps to filter out the Sun's dangerous ultraviolet light.

At ground level, though, where it results from a reaction between traffic exhausts and sunlight, it is an irritant for the airways, as is fine particulate matter, which can lodge dangerously in the lungs.

This century, climate change is expected to induce changes in air pollution, exposure to which could increase annual premature deaths by more than 100,000 adults worldwide. Based on the findings from a modelling study published ...

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Of course millions of people could be kept from dying if less cheap power is available. Birth rates would plummet as people starved and in due time less living people would result in fewer deaths. That is the progressive way to save the earth, less living people.

And *who* alone is responsible for the lack of clean nuclear energy in the modern age? "Environmentalists"! Old reactor designs chug along, for lack of safe updates, billions going to Enron schemes and Solyandra boondoggles instead of nuclear energy upgrades. Jim Hansen, Stewart Brand (Whole Earth Catalog), A Greenpeace cofounder, James Lovelock (Gaia hypothesis), and the power authority of NYC are all enthusiastic about nuclear.

"Blah, blah, blah Fox News, Koch brothers (who?!), Big Oil...."

Cost/benefit analysis requires cost analysis (lives and jobs lost by energy rationing) and not just a benefit tally. Everyone knows this. So what does this work and its headline grabbing press release amount to? Propaganda, mostly.

That the word "fertilization" is absent is omitted-variable bias, but ozone has three atoms, so there must be experts behind it!

Five of my one-star reviews are from accounts that have never posted a comment, all registered in the last year.

Hey, Neinsense99, how do you feel about these *fake* accounts, given that you are also giving a single star to my comment about how cost/benefit analysis must also include actual costs and actual benefits? Do you really think that information about how old school environmentalists have turned on Greenpeace is somehow bad information? Or that climate alarmist conspiracy theories do not merit serious mocking efforts since they are both hypocritical by a factor of 100X and not supported by real journalistic evidence, only *forged* documents by climatologist Peter Gleick?

Now after a mere 12 minutes, actual regular poster "thermodynamics" has also rated even my Typo correction a single star. Hmm....hey thermodynamics, is your account being controlled by a script or are you really up at nearly 4AM?

...and now "thermodynamics" is replaced by user "ThisGuyIsAMoron" in offering a single star rating at 4:32AM on the East Coast. The user profile shows only one blank post and yet I have also received a personal message here on Phys.org four days ago from ThisGuyIsAMoron which reflects his "*sniff sniff*" profile entry: "Is it time to change your soiled nappy yet, or what?"

Now after a mere 12 minutes, actual regular poster "thermodynamics" has also rated even my Typo correction a single star. Hmm....hey thermodynamics, is your account being controlled by a script or are you really up at nearly 4AM?

Hey "toot" who is also rating within 12 minutes, are you really reading this?

Nick. I am still up and what does that matter? I think the people who have been on this list for a while know I stick to the technical issues. You might note that I actually read what you say and you have demonstrated often that you deserve nothing more than a 1 and if I could give you a zero I would. It is interesting you would think I am a bot because I respond quickly from a different time zone than you are in. I have only one login. I reserve the right to rate any comments as I see them. The reason I rated your comment on your typo is that it links back to your earlier post and it was worthles

Avoiding premature deaths would keep people healthier and leave them in the workforce.

Ah. Slaves must be kept at optimum efficiency.

Well, since the self-interest-angle hasn't worked (for some reason people seem resitant to the idea that living in a cleaner environment is more fun) maybe the wallet-angle will.

Of course millions of people could be kept from dying if less cheap power is available. Birth rates would plummet as people starved

Bit heavy on the hyperbole, are we? Energy costs are only a fraction of your annual expenses. If that rises by a few percent it isn't going to kill you. It's not like renewables are more expensive than traditional energy sources (taking all ancillary costs, hidden taxes and subsidies into account they are actually quite a bit cheaper)

thermodynamics, it's well known that you are a computer modeller who suffers from a direct conflict of interest in the climate debate because your funding depends on confirmation of single bullet climate control by CO₂, unlike myself, who am merely trying to clean up my online science magazine of preference, and now it is also known that your buddies here are mostly blank accounts with potty fetish profile entries. Are you not embarrassed that the online consensus that skeptical comments are "worthles" is an artificial construct?

...oh this is just delicious...now the first ever actual *spam* I've ever seen on boutique site Phys.org appears for Sinister1811 to also down-rate within minutes. Looks like someone's frantic attention has been gotten! Tonight we even see damage control.

Hey you guys, thermodynamics and now antialias, how come the skeptical posts you down-rate are all being hog piled on by fake accounts?! I thought that climate alarm represented a sincere consensus. Are not my comments here very relevant to the debate then?

And thermodynamics, as you speak of down-rating my comment, what *about* this huge number of fake accounts that a screenshot show are the only others also down-rating the same comments?!:http://s24.postim...ends.jpg

antialias' statement, "Energy costs are only a fraction of your annual expenses." neglects to multiply each penny boost in the cost of energy by the dozens of times each and every *product* bought in a year relies on cheap energy to move through each and every step of both its production and shipping but also every other overhead process involved in its marketing and eventual disposal. The cost of energy doesn't go into products a single time. Everybody intuitively knows this, except those who listen to smoke screening propagandists.

Nik says: "Hey you guys, thermodynamics and now antialias, how come the skeptical posts you down-rate are all being hog piled on by fake accounts?! I thought that climate alarm represented a sincere consensus. Are not my comments here very relevant to the debate then?"

I never thought about the bots that might be out there giving you 1 ratings. If those are really bots then they seem to have a much better grasp of physics than you do. I guess this goes to show that artificial intelligence systems are better informed than you are. :-)

Now how about getting back to this article you are commenting on. I expect we will be getting a number of news releases to accompany the release of the IPCC report this week. This research on carbon cleanup is pertinent because if governments are going to do anything about carbon capture they will need informed predictions based on science. This report may or may not be accurate, but you have shown zero evidence that the report is inaccurate. con

continued for Nik: Do you have any basis for your assumptions that this paper is worthless? Have you published anything that refutes this paper or do you know of anyone who has done a comparable analysis that shows this paper to be wrong? Please post links showing contrasting evidence.

MR166, I strongly note that *every* one if your posts listed in the Activity tab when I click your name includes ratings from yourself and the same two fake accounts, "toot" and "open."

thermodynamics astonishingly claims: "I never thought about the bots that might be out there giving you 1 ratings." and yet has himself been actively interested in the recent past with fake accounts on Phys.org:http://s13.postim...bots.jpg

And yet if I help him think of something new, using great labor to obtain screenshot evidence, he also downrates this highly relevant point? Downrates new information!

That the headline is exactly backwards is highlighted by the extreme measures real greenhouse operators go to generate CO₂:http://www.omafra...-077.htm

thermodynamics, I *do* get to invoke logic in debates and diverting my point with calls for laborious link searches during a work day amounts to a logical fallacy, as you are likely well aware of by now, being a very active Climatology supporter who has likely been at least indirectly tutored by multimillion dollar greenie PR firms like the ones who established both RealClimate.org and DeSmogBlog.com, the central pro-Climatology web sites.

Invoking logic is not a logical fallacy but invoking authority when confronted with logic is the oldest fallacy of all, one that fills history books with captivating drama including the rise and eventual fall of whole civilizations.

A push for a voluntary one-child policy won't help us here and now, but it would help reduce the world population CONSENTUALLY over the next several decades.

This is the most practical, moral way to reduce total net carbon emissions.

The U.N. should pass a resolution limiting to like 2 or 3 children per woman in Africa and Islamic countries, with a voluntary 1 child per woman suggestion, in order to help stop their absurd population growth, r.e. 5 to 8 children per woman.

The U.S. could make tax code so that children beyond the second child do not qualify for tax credits and tax deductions on their parent's tax returns, and for divorced or separated parents, they can't get deductions or credits for more than 2 children total between them.

Having "18 kids and counting" should be a crime.

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